African hypocrisy over Obama
Columnist Chris Agbiti of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, looks at African leaders’ jubilant reaction to Barack Obama’s election victory and sees hypocrisy.
If one may ask, what business do African countries, together with their stinking leaders, have in rejoicing over Obama’s victory at the U.S. poll when we know in our hearts of hearts that we will never allow the kind of system that has produced Obama in U.S. election to be replicated in our own land?
Or, are we under a delusion that, with Obama’s presidency, African countries shall wake up one morning, like the fabled Alice in Wonderland, and find all the good things of life in sufficiency for all as obtain in the western world, even while our leaders and people continue in their culture of greed, corruption, ethnic hostilities and all such practices antithetical to the dictate of modern civilization?
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We must stop deceiving ourselves. It is high time we told ourselves a few home truths. Whatever Obama is today or stands for, he owes it all to the American society.
If Barack Obama had been raised in Africa, says Mr Agbiti, the best he could aspire to would be a faculty position at “one of our glorified secondary schools, called university”. He could hardly have risen to power in today’s Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, etc.
The American society that shaped Obama to become what he is to day places a higher premium of kinship of ideas over and above that of blood.
By implication, Africa is held back by over-emphasis on the kinship of blood. That sounds remarkably similar to what The Times of London columnist Matthew Parris said earlier today. Mr Parris’s considered suggestion for improvement of African society is encouragement of Christian faith.
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